I'm really interested in exploring digital data that reflects some part of me. So, I decided to look at my Facebook which is a place where I tend to allow my personality to shine. I started using Facebook in 2008. It's such a long period of time that makes me feel like Facebook contains some part of my personality and memory even I barely posted anything. Even most people tend to stop using it, Facebook is still the most popular social media for Thai people. That's why it's the place where my relationship with friends is being recorded.
For the final project, I downloaded all my reaction data from Facebook and created an emotional map based on the reactions I used. These are my reactions since February 24th, 2016 when Facebook allowed users to send more emotions than like. Here is some interesting pattern I found.
I never used ANGRY reaction even with some political news that I should angry because I feel like it's impolite to angry at someone.
I perceive SORRY reaction as a "SAD" emoji. That's why I used it a lot with something I feel uncomfortable with the post.
Most of the time I used LOVE reaction to say thank you. The long oranges line on the map illustrated the moment I did that.
I barely used HAHA and WOW. I think this emotion is complicated and it tends to overlap with LOVE and norma LIKE.
After digging into which posts and comments I used HAHA, most of them are super funny animal videos.
For WOW, I only used it with my very close friends and the reason I used it is to get on their nerve or try to be funny.
Sometimes I LIKE the post for the sake of being polite and let them know that I saw the post.
Most of the time, I hit LIKE without thinking. Sometimes, I even hit like before reading the post. This reaction process happened very fast. When I look back into the post I hit LIKE, most of the time, I'm not really like it at all. It was just for socializing with friends. I found that our communication process is very complicated. It's really hard to read the emotion of people just from their reactions to the post. At the same time, these reactions happened on a subconscious level where the like don't even know what they thinking.